Boli Labs, a fictional Bengaluru startup that builds a voice assistant for farmers, said on Wednesday that its app now understands and answers in Marathi and Bhojpuri as well as Hindi.
Farmers press one button and ask a question the way they would ask a neighbour: why the leaves on a chilli plant are curling, when the nearest mandi opens, or what the week's forecast looks like. The app answers aloud in a few sentences.
How the answers are checked
Answers about crop protection are reviewed by a small team of agronomists before they go into the app, co-founder Priya Raghavan said. When the assistant is not sure, it says so and suggests a visit to the local agriculture office.
"Most farmers we meet would rather talk than type," Raghavan said. "Marathi and Bhojpuri were the languages people asked for most." The company plans to test Odia next.
This is a demo story: every name, place, organisation and figure in it is fictional.
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